


Quarry Contemplations (Are you listening?)

by mhmrosey6



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Heart-to-Heart, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24613882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mhmrosey6/pseuds/mhmrosey6
Summary: “I’m not really afraid to die, you know.”“Based on the way you charged that goose down on the shore, I’m going to go ahead and say I was already aware of this."In which Richie and Eddie are sunning themselves on some rock in the quarry and Eddie feels a little lost.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 44





	Quarry Contemplations (Are you listening?)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is just a tiny little scene that I was writing just for drabble- please enjoy! Tell me your thoughts and if you'd like to see more!

“I’m not really afraid to die, you know.”

Richie looked up at Eddie from his spot on their sunning boulder, squinting into the sunlight to try and get a good look at the other boy. The two of them had biked down to the quarry on a whim after the rest of the gang failed to show up to a pre-planned meetup at the arcade. It was all different excuses from each one of them. Bill had to help Georgie with homework, Stan promised his dad he’d go birdwatching with him, Mike had a lab report to do—all of it was understandable but left the two who _weren’t_ busy at a loss. The arcade wasn’t very well fun with just two. _“It’s like playin’ baseball with no one hollerin’ and throwin’ Cracker Jacks from the stands,”_ Richie would argue. In his mind, no one could _possibly_ hope to dispute with logic like that, and no one did. He felt quite proud of that.

Eddie looked serene from his spot on the rocks. The bright, sweltering sunlight spilled over the other boy’s form in a way that made him seem to emanate the sunlight himself, his clothes an eclipse over his skin. Eddie wasn’t looking at Richie, but rather past him, at something Richie couldn’t see. Maybe he was watching the birds flit around the trees, or maybe the leaves falling to the ground. Maybe he was seeing a giant floating inhaler stare down at him from the sky. Richie couldn’t tell. It was more fun to imagine the latter scenario.

“Based on the way you charged that goose down on the shore, I’m going to go ahead and say I was already aware of this,” Richie replied, pausing to see if Eddie would look at him, them smiling lopsidedly up at him anyway when he didn’t.

“That’s not what I mean Rich,” Eddie replied simply. He seemed to take a moment to think, then decidedly turned towards Richie. His lips twitched longingly upwards at Richie’s smile already positioned towards him.

“Mm?” Richie questioned.

“My mom,” Eddie responded with a shrug. He idly toed some pebbles at his feet.

“Yeah?” Richie poised again. He tilted a bit more on his side.

“Yeah,” Eddie replied.

He fell silent for longer than Richie thought he would, and for a minute there, considered the conversation over. He made a sort of huffing sound and rolled back onto his back staring up at the sky. He could feel grits of sand from the beach stuck between his teeth. He chewed on them lazily.

“I think she wants me to be,” Eddie spoke again, after the silence had become sufficiently filling. “Sounds weird, I know- it sorta is. A parent is supposed to make a child scared so they don’t go on killin’ themselves. S’ right, I suppose, but… not like this.”

Richie pushed himself up into a sitting position this time and turned to face Eddie.

“You’re so cute, Eds, but I just don’t understand what you’re sayin’. _Succinct speech is a virtue, Mr. Kaspbrak. It’d do you well to take that to heart,”_ Richie drawled, taking on the ridiculous, fake-pompous accent of their dear English teacher, Mr. Brown. Eddie huffed out a laugh and kicked a few pebbles in Richie’s direction.

“Shut up, I mean it,” Eddie said. He shook his head to himself and looked at his shoes. “I mean- with her health stuff. _Our_ health stuff. I think I’m supposed to be afraid of all these sicknesses killin’ me, but I’m not. I’m not.”

To Richie, it sounded like Eddie was trying to convince himself, but he did that often. There were moments where Eddie would fall into himself- down some deep, dark cavern that not even Richie was familiar with- and he’d be somewhere else. He’d talk about his mom, or his father, or the dead flowers outside of his back shed, or a broken bottle on the baseball fields. It didn’t really matter what it was; he always sounded as if it was tormenting him in some way. Richie always insisted that Eddie had a secret flair for the dramatic, but in times like this, the way he sounded sucked all the will to tease him right out of Richie’s chest.

“And…….an’ I’m _angry_ ,” Eddie continued, forcing Richie out of his own thoughts. “It’s not fair, what she does. It’s not…. fair. I can’t… I don’t know how to _live_ correctly. I wasn’t taught how. I was only taught how to die, and how to die right. How to die afraid. I don’t wanna die afraid.”

Richie took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes for no reason other than that he wanted to. It was like pressing the reset button on his thoughts. He wasn’t used to being confronted with situations like this.

“Eddie, it’s not like you’re going to die tomorrow, come on,” Richie said, his lips tipped in a careful smile but his voice serious. “You gotta loosen up a bit. You’ve got time.”

“How do _you_ know that?”

Richie opened his mouth to respond, then closed it, then repeated the cycle over again. He hadn’t expected such a quick answer, nor had he expected _that_ as an answer. He _didn’t_ know whether Eddie would die tomorrow. No one knew that sort of thing.

“I don’t- “

“You don’t,” Eddie confirmed, cutting Richie’s voice off. “You don’t.”

If you were to ask him right then what the hell was going on, Richie would claim to be just as clueless as you, but he wasn’t- not really. Eddie had a terribly complicated mind that twisted and turned in ways Richie could never understand, and sometimes it turned right into a dark corner with no warning.

Richie’s brain was much simpler than that. He pictured it as a regular suburban house; easy to navigate, clearly defined rooms, and one _unfortunately large_ closet full of discarded items and things he would much rather forget.

“I don’t,” Richie finally confirmed, “but I do _hope.”_

Eddie was unusually quiet after that, and Richie became more concerned. He looked up at the other and refused to look away this time, trying to find something in his expression that would comfort him. He didn’t.

“Who else would I have to tease?” Richie added nervously. He waited; no response. “Someone’s gotta be on the receiving end of my wet willy’s, yaknow. It certainly ain’t gonna be Bill. He’s a real crank with that shit.”

There was still no response. Richie felt a lump form in his throat, as if he wanted to cry for some unknown reason. The silence was extremely unnerving, and it made him feel like Eddie had already slipped away from him.

Was Eddie going to slip away from him?

“I uh…..I wouldn’t have anyone to do this with, either,” He started again, his words cutting painfully through the silence. He tried not to wince at the sound of it. “I don’t mean sittin’ on a rock. I mean- I mean…..I _do_ mean sittin’ on a rock, I suppose, but also……not. You uh- you know. Don’t you?”

Eddie looked at him this time, but didn’t say anything still. His eyes were completely unreadable.

“Don’t you?” Richie repeated. _Again,_ no response. Now he was worried _and_ frustrated. “For God’s sake, Eds, answer when I’m talkin’ so I know you’re not going to go fling yourself off the nearest bridge when we leave this place.”

“I’m not,” Eddie replied, his voice nearly inaudible.

“You _what?”_ Richie asked forcefully in response, leaning towards Eddie to hear him better.

“I’m _not!”_ Eddie threw his hands up in the air, obvious annoyance now pervading the air. “Can’t I just say a thing and not be bitten for it? Goddamn!”

Now it was Richie’s turn to screw his face into a frown. “That’s not right, now. That’s not fair and you know it.”

“Maybe I don’t! Isn’t that what I just said? I don’t know what’s fair! Weren’t you listening at all?” Eddie bit back. It would’ve been a fair argument, considering Richie did get flighty at times, but Eddie had said the exact _opposite_ of what he claimed to say. He claimed that he _knew_ what his mom did wasn’t fair.

Richie was about to respond but was cut off by the sound of the other boy growling in frustration and throwing his face into his hands. He could no longer see Eddie’s face, but his shoulders had begun to shake, and that was informative enough.

Eddie was crying.

In a sudden moment of clarity, Richie was suddenly aware that he’d grossly misunderstood Eddie.

“You wanted reassurance,” Richie said slowly, “you wanted me to tell you she _is_ unfair, and you don’t deserve what she’s put on you. You’re scared.”

Eddie’s lack of reply was a response all in its own. Richie sighed and got up, then walked over to the spot where Eddie sat and plopped down beside him. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his own legs.

“You’re very afraid,” Richie repeated in a whisper, looking to the side at his friend.

Eddie had dropped his hands from his face despite visible tears still streaming down his reddened cheeks. He looked ahead, looked up, looked down— just about anywhere other than Richie. He wrapped his arms around his legs in a mirror of Richie’s position, but he did so in such a way that kept his arms loose, just in case. Waiting. Always waiting.

Richie counted the freckles on Eddie’s arm. He waited differently than Eddie, but he still waited. Perhaps they were waiting in different lines.

“Do not be afraid,” Eddie finally said. He pinched idly at the skin on his wrist. “do not be afraid. Priests, politicians, gods, monsters- comes from all their lips. ‘Do not be afraid’.”

Richie paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Fuck em’.”

Eddie turned to look at Richie, eyebrows knit together. “What?” he asked simply.

Richie shrugged again. “Fuck em’. Stay afraid. Scare your own little pants off forever, Eds. Flinch every step you take. Scream like a little girl at every twig snap. Fuck, read every medical journal out there and think about every single disease you could ever get, then read them all over again. Nothin’s gonna change the fact that you’re living and breathing more than you ever were before. No use in beatin’ fear if you’re going to pull the punch every time.” He leaned to the side and gently knocked their shoulders together.

Eddie went silent again, but Richie wasn’t afraid of it anymore. He was thinking. No need to worry until that thought became real, right?

“When did you get so smart?” Eddie said. When Richie looked at him, he could see the trace of a smile dancing across Eddie’s lips. It made him feel……...well, it made him _feel._

“I didn’t. Brain is still empty as a fuckin’ balloon,” Richie replied, his own face morphed into a grin. Eddie turned to look at him and properly smiled, and Richie felt _more._ “Fuck your mom. I don’t mean that literally, this time.”

He reached over and gave Eddie’s arm a gently squeeze. It was the biggest action of physical comfort he could manage without shattering the moment completely. He couldn’t really trust himself with sincerity to a certain degree.

Eddie placed his hand over Richie’s, trapping it down on his arm. He didn’t make eye contact with Richie or anything; he simply looked away.

Richie lost track of how long they sat their like that, hands trapped together but not…...not _clasped._ It felt odd, like the contact had shoved his brain into some space between conscious and dreaming. They were both trying very hard to reach out to one another, but a world of doubt and insecurity separated them somehow. This— this hand-holding-but-not—it had to be good enough for now. It had to be.

It was.


End file.
